Yesterday, Apple reported record year over year growth of 46%. Today, Wall Street responded with enthusiasm snapping up Apple shares. Apple's strong earnings combined with good earnings news from other technology leaders, such as IBM and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), to rally the computer hardware stocks higher.

Apple soared 6 15/16 or 6.51%% to close at 113 1/2 with quadruple normal volume of 16 million shares traded.

The Nasdaq gained 38 points (0.92%) to close at 4189 on record volume of 1.8 billion shares and set another new record high.

The Dow lost 138 points (1.20%) to close at 11351, on volume of 1.1 billion shares traded. The killer earnings are coming from the tech heavy Nasdaq, not the blue chips of the Dow. The interest rate sensitive financial and cyclical stocks continued to lead the Big Board down for a third day.

The S&P 500 lost 10.33 points (0.71%) to close at 1445.57. Nevertheless, the Russell 2000, a small capitalization index, set another new high today placing the Russell 2000 7% higher in the last five days, a rare event.

The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond traded down 10/32 to 92 14/32 bumping up the yield to 6.74% from 6.71% on Wednesday.

In Apple related businesses, Adobe gained 3/4 to close at 63 7/8. Akamai gained 10 13/16 to close at 235 9/16, while ARM Holdings gave back 14 3/4 to close at 145 dollars. Earthlink, Apple's new Internet partner, traded flat at 47 3/4.

Apple's Power PC partners: IBM gained 2 dollars to close at 121 1/2 on their strong earnings announcement. Motorola gained 3 3/4 to close at 144 1/2.

Apple's competitors: Gateway climbed 4 dollars to end at 60 7/8. Gateway should announce earning sometime this afternoon. Intel lost 4 7/16 to close at 95 5/8. Dell gained 1 1/4 to end at 43 3/4. Hewlett Packard gained 3/16 to close at 116 3/16, while Compaq gained 5/8 to close at 30 1/4. Shares of Microsoft slumped a dollar to close at 106.

Sun Microsystems beat estimates by a penny for earnings of $0.21 and revenues were higher than expected show 25% growth. Sun rose x to close at x.

In other market news: The Labor Department reported that first-time claims for unemployment benefits slumped 39,000 last week to create the tightest U.S. job market in 30 years.

According to the Commerce Department, the U.S. international trade deficit swelled again in November to a record $26.5 billion. A flood of consumer goods, from foreign cars to computers, is flowing into the U.S. in an effort to satiate the strong American urge to splurge.

Mike Fenollosa, an economist with John Hancock, told the Wall Street Journal, "The good times keep rolling for U.S. consumers. Cheaper-priced imports help keep inflation at bay and satisfy Americans' insatiable demand for goods." But Wall Streeters are more likely to read interest rate fears into any sign of expanding consumer demand at this point.

On the flip side, U.S. exports are up 0.7% in the same period to a record $82.9 billion due to rising demand for U.S. made goods from the Asian economies now on the mend after their financial crisis in 1998.

Look for a meeting of the G7 nations this weekend and tomorrow is a double witching options expiration Friday which often brings increased market volatility.

For full quotes on all the companies mentioned in this article, we have assembled this set of quotes at Yahoo! for your reference. We also have many of these same quotes reported live (20 minute delay) on our home page. For other stories regarding Apple's stock activity, visit our Apple Stock Watch Special Report.